Rosh Hashana

"Call Me Maybe" has gone Jewish, just in time for Rosh Hashana. The French arm of the Jewish Agency for Israel created "Call Me Maybe-Chana Tova," a parody video of the Carly Rae Jepsen song to ring in the Jewish New Year. ( Shana Tova is how you say Happy New Year in Hebrew). The video was posted to YouTube on Sept. 3 and had already racked up close to 675,000 views by Monday afternoon. That's hundreds of thousands more views than it had Monday morning. The Jewish Agency for Israel was instrumental in establishing the state of Israel, but now the organization has made strengthening Jewish identity in young people around the world and in Israel its mission.

"Call Me Maybe" has gone Jewish, just in time for Rosh Hashana. The French arm of the Jewish Agency for Israel created "Call Me Maybe-Chana Tova," a parody video of the Carly Rae Jepsen song to ring in the Jewish New Year. ( Shana Tova is how you say Happy New Year in Hebrew). The video was posted to YouTube on Sept. 3 and had already racked up close to 675,000 views by Monday afternoon. That's hundreds of thousands more views than it had Monday morning. The Jewish Agency for Israel was instrumental in establishing the state of Israel, but now the organization has made strengthening Jewish identity in young people around the world and in Israel its mission.

September 2, 2010 | By Phyllis Glazer, Special to the Los Angeles Times

It may be 7,536 miles away from her own kitchen in Tel Aviv, but I can just see my 95-year-old mother jotting down suggestions for what she thinks my sister in Los Angeles should serve on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year that starts at sundown Wednesday. Her selections are predictable: homemade challah; chicken soup with kneidlach ; vegetarian chopped liver (in the old days it was the real McCoy); roasted chicken (she no longer eats red meat) accompanied by a tzimmes and numerous other side dishes; and a fruit compote with her famous mandelbrot or a honey cake for dessert.

September 2, 2010 | By Phyllis Glazer, Special to the Los Angeles Times

It may be 7,536 miles away from her own kitchen in Tel Aviv, but I can just see my 95-year-old mother jotting down suggestions for what she thinks my sister in Los Angeles should serve on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year that starts at sundown Wednesday. Her selections are predictable: homemade challah; chicken soup with kneidlach ; vegetarian chopped liver (in the old days it was the real McCoy); roasted chicken (she no longer eats red meat) accompanied by a tzimmes and numerous other side dishes; and a fruit compote with her famous mandelbrot or a honey cake for dessert.

When baker Ben Moskovitz was growing up in Apsha, Czechoslovakia, his mother made a sweet cake for Rosh Hashanah out of burnt sugar. "It was so delicious," said the owner of Star Bakery in Oak Park, Mich. "Honey was too expensive for us. Here I use pure honey, and I still think my mother's cake was better and I know I am wrong. The taste of hers is still in my mouth." Like Moskovitz, most American Jews will begin the New Year on the evening of Oct.

Colorful prayer shawls and white silk yarmulkes mixed with Sunday-best dress as members of a synagogue and a Christian church literally linked arms to celebrate Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year. Haunting calls from sacred rams' horns summoned members of University Synagogue and Irvine United Church of Christ for the unusual Sunday service. Pastor Fred Plumer, his wife and two members of the synagogue read the opening prayers.

A longtime mail carrier said Thursday that he is being forced to work on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, despite his offer to take the day off without pay or to pay a substitute himself. Jeff Schreiber, a mail carrier in Costa Mesa for 19 years, said he followed policy by requesting Saturday off 10 days in advance, but the request was denied. "I've offered everything I can possibly think of and they just won't bend," said Schreiber, 44, of Mission Viejo.

Not to toot his own horn, but 6-year-old Sam Hounan figures he could grind out shofars for the Jewish New Year all day long if he had to. "I bet I can get this as smooth as glass. It's pretty hard, but I'm good at it," Sam said as he furiously rubbed sandpaper over the rough-edged sheep's horn he was clutching. Sam was one of 200 children swarming around worktables at a Westwood temple, where animal horns were being fashioned into ceremonial trumpets for use this week at Rosh Hashana services.

Phyllis Beim searched for God when her son was in teenage turmoil. For Jerry Rabow it was the dawning realization that his life as a high-powered tax attorney was out of balance. Jeff Levine was stirred when his 3-year-old-daughter ogled the Torah scrolls in delight. All three share a search for meaning--one that millions of Jews the world over will be invited to join beginning at sundown today with the ceremonial blowing of the shofar, or ram's horn.

Capacity crowds flocking to High Holy Days services in synagogues throughout Southern California beginning today for Rosh Hashana will hear a common message: Support your Jewish brothers and sisters in war-torn Israel. Rabbis will ask worshipers, some of whom they won't see until next year's services, to help those in the Jewish homeland in a variety of ways.

On the eve of the Rosh Hashana holiday, Jewish leaders launched a campaign Thursday to end hunger in the city by rallying individuals and congregations around the cause. The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and other groups are promoting the "Fed Up With Hunger" drive by placing 40,000 information packets and reusable grocery bags in more than 50 synagogues during this weekend's celebration of the Jewish new year. Rosh Hashana begins at sundown today and continues through Sunday.

Alain Cohen holds out a gorgeous spiral-shaped loaf of challah, the color of cherry wood. On the top of the bread is a graceful open hand made of dough. Cohen and his baker, Yuri Amsellen, have been experimenting again. From the crowded kitchen of Cohen's Pico Boulevard takeout shop, Got Kosher? Provisions, comes the hypnotic smell of yeast. In the weeks before the Jewish new year, the store has baked loaves in the shape of Jacob's ladder, and others in a circle with a well in the center, meant to hold honey for dipping.

MAYBE THE evolution of the Israeli food scene over the last 25 years isn't the first thing that crosses your mind when you think about contemporary Israel. Maybe you're not even sure what Israeli cuisine is. But if it piques your interest, especially in this week before Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, there's a new coffee-table-worthy cookbook.

On Rosh Hashana, Ashkenazi Jews dip apple slices in honey for a "sweet New Year." The Aleppine Jews -- whose ancestors were prominent residents of Aleppo, Syria, for many centuries -- may eat scarlet candied quinces instead, or even translucent shreds of candied spaghetti squash. That's just the beginning of the unexpected quality of their cuisine. Its roots go back many centuries, and the dishes have both rich historical resonance and a remarkable originality.

Joining 1.28 billion Muslims and 14.9 million Jews around the world, Southern California adherents of the two faith traditions are observing their respective holy seasons starting today. It's the first full day of Rosh Hashana -- the Jewish New Year -- and also the beginning of the month of Ramadan. Rosh Hashana, the start of the 10 High Holy Days leading up to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, began at sundown Friday. Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, prayer and charity, started today.

YOU can't cook just anything for Rosh Hashana. There are rules to follow, traditions to uphold. And I wasn't familiar with any of them: I grew up in Tornado Alley, in a Quaker boarding school in northern Iowa. But here I was, in Southern California, setting about to prepare a Rosh Hashana dinner for my Jewish boyfriend. What to cook became a theology lesson as well as a culinary one.

Alain Cohen holds out a gorgeous spiral-shaped loaf of challah, the color of cherry wood. On the top of the bread is a graceful open hand made of dough. Cohen and his baker, Yuri Amsellen, have been experimenting again. From the crowded kitchen of Cohen's Pico Boulevard takeout shop, Got Kosher? Provisions, comes the hypnotic smell of yeast. In the weeks before the Jewish new year, the store has baked loaves in the shape of Jacob's ladder, and others in a circle with a well in the center, meant to hold honey for dipping.

The Y2K crisis can be averted by substituting the Hebrew calendar for the Gregorian calendar. People of the Jewish faith are now celebrating Rosh Hashana, their new year, and the new year in the Jewish calendar reads 5760. The Hebrew calendar is 3,760 years beyond the millennium. SAMUEL M. ROSEN Newbury Park

The air will be filled Tuesday morning with the ancient, timeless bleating of the shofar, the twisted ram's horn that trumpets Rosh Hashana, which starts tonight at sundown. This Jewish New Year -- 5766 -- promises to ring with more shofars than ever. Just as honey's sweetness is the traditional taste of the Jewish New Year, the shofar is its voice, a sound that Rabbi Stephen Robbins, of Temple N'vay Shalom in Los Angeles, describes as both earthy and spiritual.

Caltech's Ben Leitner is a man with a mission over the next two weeks. A third-year graduate student in mathematics, Leitner, 25, is the de facto head of Caltech Hillel, a tiny branch of the 82-year-old international organization of Jewish college and university students. Caltech demands much from its students, making it hard to find time for anything nonacademic, including Hillel.